Democratic meddling in Ohio GOP Senate primary is hypocritical

Senate Majority PAC, an independent group aligned with Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., is spending $2.7 million to elevate Donald Trump’s pick — a fellow 2020 election denier — in a three-way Republican primary on Tuesday. The idea is to help the candidate, former luxury car dealer Bernie Moreno, because he would be the easiest GOP nominee for incumbent Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, to defeat in the fall.

It’s a replay of the cynical tactic Democrats employed in the 2022 midterm elections. Then, they spent more than $53 million across nine states’ primaries to boost far-right Republican House candidates who had questioned or denied the validity of Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election, as well as MAGA-inclined gubernatorial candidates in Maryland, Pennsylvania and Illinois.

It paid off: Democrats hold several House seats they might not have otherwise and won all three governorships. It reeked powerfully, and enduringly, of hypocrisy. Who knows why so many Americans still back Mr. Trump despite his lies about 2020? Maybe part of the reason is that Democratic operatives keep manipulating the issue to their advantage.

The Democratic commercial is nominally an attack ad because it calls Mr. Moreno “too conservative” and mentions his support for a national abortion ban and repealing Obamacare. But those points appeal to GOP base voters.

In the Ohio race, state Sen. Matt Dolan would be the strongest Republican candidate against Mr. Brown in November. He’s a governance-minded conservative in the mold of former senator Rob Portman. In a general election matchup, Mr. Brown leads Mr. Moreno but trails Mr. Dolan.

To repeat: Senate Majority PAC’s sole job is winning elections, so it’s rational for it to intervene in favor of Mr. Moreno. But these tactics clash grotesquely with President Biden’s portrayal of the 2024 stakes in this month’s State of the Union address: “January 6th and the lies about the 2020 election, and the plots to steal the election, posed the gravest threat to our democracy since the Civil War,” he declared.

Mr. Trump has twice carried Ohio by eight points. The Moreno campaign points out that many Democrats assumed Mr. Trump would be the easiest Republican for Hillary Clinton to defeat in 2016. Whoever wins Tuesday’s primary — even Mr. Moreno — has a real chance of sitting in the Senate a year from now. Democrats should be careful what they wish for.